"Free Bird" - Fifty Years

I've gotten sick and tired of the media gushing over the fiftieth anniversary of the start of hip-hop, most likely the worst musical form ever invented - mainly because it's not music. Ever hear any actual instruments in hip-hop? Or singing?  Two days after a lazy DJ took to scratching records to make weird sounds for kids to dance to at a Saturday party in the South Bronx, Lynyrd Skynyrd, who were from the South, released their debut album, (pronounced 'Lĕh-'nérd 'Skin-'nérd), which included the American answer to Led Zeppelin's epic "Stairway To Heaven."

"Free Bird" is an incredible power ballad steeped in the blues and in country and western love songs, evoking the romance of youth, freedom, and limitless possibilities.  While it is true that "Free Bird" does highlight the self-absorption of Americans in the 1970s - the narrator is leaving a woman to travel and see more of the world - he accepts blame for breaking it off and laments that he's a bird that one cannot change.  It is to those lyrics that, under the direction of producer Al Kooper, the wailing guitar lines take a mellow vibe with unsettling undertones, taking flight at a faster tempo for one of the heaviest and most intense sets of solos that sear through the air for four astonishing minutes.

The song was composed by Skynyrd guitarist Allen Collins and lead singer Ronnie Van Zant, prompted by Collins' girlfriend (later wife) Kathy, who asked him, "If I leave here tomorrow, would you still remember me?" Using images of freedom and regret to illustrate what the narrator envisions for himself, Collins and Van Zant wrote "Free Bird" in four minutes - as long as the guitar solos that take the song out on record.  (The solos were added to give Van Zant a rest on stage at a time when the band was playing long sets at night clubs and and were performing constantly.) When asked what the song ultimately means, Van Zant said that the song is "what it means to be free, in that a bird can fly wherever he wants to go," adding that "everyone wants to be free . . . that's what this country's all about."

Also, the song is about freedom from . . . life.  Van Zant once dedicated the song to the memories of the late Allman Brothers Band members Duane Allman and Berry Oakley, explaining that "they're both free birds."  On October 20, 1977, Van Zant became a free bird himself when he, guitarist/vocalist Steve Gaines (who joined the band in 1976), and Gaines' sister Cassie, a backing vocalist for Skynyrd, and members of the band's entourage were killed in a horrible plane crash in Mississippi - two days after Lynyrd Skynyrd released their ironically titled album Street Survivors. 

Death haunts this song.  All of the original members of Lynyrd Skynyrd are dead (guitarist Gary Rossington died this past March), and the song is a popular choice for funerals.  Like all the great epic rock songs '- Family's "The Weaver's Answer," Led Zeppelin's aforementioned "Stairway To Heaven" - it anticipates mortality, and in doing so presents a universal message.  And so, like any great novelist who leaves behind a classic book or a filmmaker who leaves behind a classic movie, the original Lynyrd Skynyrd (a band calling itself that led by Ronnie Van Zant's brother Johnny is still active) can survive as long as a song like "Free Bird" still exists.  When people who defend hip-hop talk about how it is always evolving, what they're really saying is that it has no longevity to sustain it without any sense of musical tradition to anchor it.  Rooted in musical traditions that pre-date rock and are likely to outlive rock, "Free Bird" is as timeless as any rock and roll song can get.  When the latest rap star fades away - or goes Hollywood and abandons hip-hop for a CBS drama series - we'll still be listening to "Free Bird." 

Why don't we listen to it now?  

Play it pretty for Atlanta.

'The Dark Side of the Moon' - Fifty Years

Like any classic rock fan, I listened to Pink Floyd's epic masterpiece The Dark Side of the Moon for its fiftieth anniversary, and I listened to it the way it's best heard - late at night, lying on my bed, ears fully concentrated on the sounds emanating from my CD player (I'm old school).  It still holds up after I first heard it in college, and its conveyance of alienation, madness and mortality seems deeper and more relevant than when it was released in 1973.

The world seems to be coming undone faster these days than at any time in decades. With COVID, the January 6 insurrection, Ukraine, climate change, the constant shake-ups in the British Parliament, and a right-wing judiciary in America on the warpath - not to mention Donald Trump threatening to retake power as the warrior and retribution of his followers - the chilling effect of The Dark Side of the Moon, with its spellbinding arrangements and penetrating lyrics, is even more of a catharsis for listeners.  It still remains an experience to get lost in, and it still reassures you that you are not alone in feeling or suspecting something amiss.  

Pink Floyd successfully created a musical expression of our deepest fears in extremely dark times.  It's a work that demands a renewed listen in times when our only connection to each other is virtual.  The sleeve artwork - with its simple refraction of light from a prism cutting through the darkness and symbolizing the quiet desperation of humanity - is an appropriately accurate reflection of the music and what it represents.

My comments are are more of an appreciation for The Dark Side of the Moon than a proper review.  For that, please click here. 

Watergate - Fifty Years

By all accounts, Richard Nixon knew nothing about the planned break-in at the Democratic National Committee headquarters at the Watergate complex in Washington before the operation was executed - and thwarted - on Saturday, June 17, 1972.  When told about it, President Nixon is said to have thrown an ashtray across the Oval Office and called the burglary "the dumbest thing I've ever heard of." 

But - and you knew this was coming - Nixon oversaw "dirty trick" operations against the Democrats that were far better planned and far more successful, having already knocked Maine senator Ed Muskie out of the 1972 campaign for the Democratic presidential nomination and assured himself of getting the arch-liberal South Dakota senator George McGovern as his general election opponent, and once Watergate blew, he needed to cover up the burglars' connection to the White House to control the damage.  And of course, the cover-up was worse than the crime.  As for the investigation itself . . . there are documentarians who can explain it and put it into perspective far better than I can in a silly blog.

I can, however, say this - though President Gerald Ford pardoned Nixon after Nixon's resignation, Nixon still lost the Presidency and was publicly shamed, making the return to respectability as an elder statesman a long and arduous one - and it's said that he had great remorse for what he did in the last days of his administration.  Nixon hardly got away with anything he did wrong.  Donald Trump, on the other hand, not only escaped punishment for his crimes as President, he's been escaping crimes he committed as a private citizen all of his life.  And the January 6 insurrection - the select committee hearings for which resume in the House today - had hardly diminished his power; rather, it's enhanced it, like a severe summer thunderstorm.  Even as the House 1/6 select committee lays out a compelling narrative of Trump and how he planned to overturn the results of the 2020 presidential election, Republicans are nominating Trump toadies to run for governorships or secretaryships of state, who hope to get elected and control the means of counting votes in the 2024 election to ensure a Trump victory even against the will of the people.

Donald Trump learned something invaluable for his own survival - as long as you have a devoted fan base on your side, nothing you do can bring you down, and nothing anyone else does to you can stop you.  Richard Nixon wasn't that type of politician.  Also, Trump was a celebrity businessman who took his cue from celebrity entertainers on how to survive when he realized that any press - even bad press - is good press.  Nixon was too thin-skinned to let bad press roll off his back.  

Now would be a good time for America to learn the lessons of Watergate before Trump gets away with hijacking our democracy.  Because once he does hijack it, it's game over. 

"Stairway To Heaven" - Fifty Years

Fifty years ago today, Led Zeppelin issued its untitled fourth album, and the fourth song on that fourth LP became first in the hearts of fans of classic rock.

"Stairway To Heaven" is one of those monumental songs from the seventies that defined every form of popular music that rock has influenced or has been influenced by, from folk balladeering to the Delta blues to tight-fisted guitar-based rock.  It summed up everything rock stood for and still stands for today, with its positive message of self-discovery and enlightenment.  It proved that Led Zeppelin had a deeper message to present lyrically and musically than that in the sexually charged, blues-based songs of their previous albums or even similarly constructed songs on this fourth LP.  As I wrote back in February 2014 in my review of the album sometimes called Led Zeppelin IV, the song is "[an] ethereal epic track that brilliantly displays the complexity, the power, and, yes, the subtlety of Led Zeppelin's music as it slowly builds from an introspective musing into a searing rock performance - the proverbial iron fist in the velvet glove."

"Stairway To Heaven" came about in a rather impromptu way, with guitarist Jimmy Page writing the music over an extended time, taking it from small pieces of music that had been taped.  Vocalist Robert Plant came up with much of the lyrics while sitting next to an evening log fire at a former workhouse for the poor - the sort of place Charles Dickens wrote about - called Headley Grange, where numerous bands recorded and rehearsed. "Headley Grange was somewhat rundown; the heating didn't work," Page later remembered.  "But it had one major advantage. Other bands had rehearsed there and hadn't had any complaints. That's a major issue, because you don't want to go somewhere and start locking into the work process and then have to pull out."

The lack of heat and the Victorian ambience, along with the rustic fire in the hearth, may very well have inspired the esoteric, pastoral lyrics of "Stairway To Heaven," with their inviting images of a songbird in a tree by a brook, forests echoing with laughter, and bustled hedgerows, with the promise that if you're headed down the wrong path, "there's still time to change the road you're on."

Page built up the arrangement of "Stairway To Heaven" in much the same matter as the Beatles' "A Day In the Life," were the music started out quietly and introspectively, with an acoustic guitar and recorders (from bassist John Paul Jones); electric guitars are eventually brought in for more texture as the pace of the tempo slowly increases.  The song is firmly planted in California folk-rock when John Bonham's drums come in, but the anticipation of a full flowering still hangs heavy in the sound.  That flowering comes with an explosion of heavy rock with a melodically fluid but menacing guitar solo from Page almost in the same style as Martin Barre's solo in Jethro Tull's :Hymn 43."  (Such complex melodicism would eventually cause the punk revolt of 1976 and 1977, but that's another post.)  Plant's voice, in the middle range, mutates back into his piercing Chipmunks-on-speed vocal as he delivers the lyrics of "Stairway To Heaven" that sum up the song and the promise of rock and roll:

And as we wind on down the road,
Our shadows taller than our soul,
There walks a lady we all know
Who shines white light and wants to show
How everything still turns to gold.
And if you listen very hard,
The tune will come to you at last
When all is one and one is all . . .
To be a rock and not to roll.  

The band slows down and brings the song in for a landing, with Robert Plant left on his own to recall the stairway one last time.  It rivals the crashing E major chord of the aforementioned "A Day In the Life" and the gong of Queen's "Bohemian Rhapsody" as one of the most memorable closing moments of  a classic-rock song. Except that "Stairway To Heaven" closed side one, not side two, of the album it was on, unlike "A Day In the Life," which closed the Beatles'  Sgt. Pepper, or "Bohemian Rhapsody," which, apart from a 71-second instrumental version of the British national anthem at the very end, closed Queen's  A Night At the Opera.  Using "Stairway To Heaven" as a side one closer demonstrated that Led Zeppelin not only had more to offer on side two of Led Zeppelin IV (and it did), but had more musical surprises to come thereafter - surprises that would include straight folk ballads, reggae, danceable pop tunes, and R&B.  "Stairway To Heaven" is one of the most transcendent songs ever offered up by a major rock  band.  And no mater how overplayed it is on classic rock radio, it's a song that deserves its ubiquitous presence.     

This post is dedicated to fellow Sirius XM urban talk host and fellow Drew University alumnus Karen Hunter, who once mocked now-former House Speaker Paul Ryan for still listening to Led Zeppelin in the 2010s.  I love you too, Karen. 😛 

And now, the song . . .

'Fearless' - Fifty Years

Fifty years ago yesterday, the British band Family released their fifth album, Fearless.

This blog entry about Family's Fearless LP is not meant to be a proper review; for that, you can go here to an October 2011 repost of my original review of the album from my Family fan page.  It is, like my January 2020 post about Family's A Song For Me, a celebration and acknowledgement of the album, an album I believe to be the band's greatest album ever.

Family were known to be innovative and unorthodox in arranging music and writing lyrics, and on Fearless, they pulled out all the stops to make an adventurous, immaculately produced album that encompasses progressive rock, soul, folk, and straightforward rock and roll and delivers high-caliber musicianship and sold professionalism.  Fearless, fifty years on, is still a spellbinding work that fulfills all of Family's promise.  The die-cut layered paging of the album sleeve, with portraits of the band members melding into one, was the perfect metaphor for their ambition.

Fearless, ironically, had less to prove for Family or for rock and roll than A Song For Me did.  A Song for Me came out at at time of uncertainty as to whether rock and roll could carry on in a new decade without the Beatles and with the Rolling Stones chastened by Altamont.  By the time Fearless came out in October 1971, rock and roll was still peaking, thanks to the Stones' resilient Sticky Fingers, the Who's Who's Next, Rod Stewart's Every Picture Tells a Story, and, a week or so, after Fearless's release, Led Zeppelin's untitled fourth album.  Less was riding on Fearless than on A Song For Me, as Family had settled into a more or less permanent lineup of Roger Chapman on vocals, Charlie Whitney on guitar, Poli Palmer on vibraphone and keyboards, and Rob Townsend on drums.  They could put out a solid album with little if any effort.  But with so many masterpiece albums - too many to list here - having already been released in 1971, would that be enough?  Of course not.  That's why Fearless went beyond just being solid and effortless.

Family's secret weapon was John Wetton, their new bass player, whose fluid bass lines anchored Family and gave their songs a more melodic flair in the rhythm.  Wetton's vocal chops proved to be indispensable - his sharing of lead vocals with Chapman on songs such as "Spanish Tide" and "Save Some For Thee" created a new dimension to their sound.  Chapman's vibrato bleat, though, remained Family's signature, particularly on tough-minded songs like "Between Blue and Me" and "Blind."

Fearless was overshadowed somewhat by other events in rock music going on at the time.  Duane Allman died n a motorcycle accident the same day of its release, and Led Zeppelin's "Stairway To Heaven" and Don McLean's "American Pie" would soon suck up the oxygen as both songs vied to define epic seventies classic rock.  But with an album as perfect as Fearless, with a closing track like "Burning Bridges" - which summed up the entire concerns of a morality-play album like Jethro Tull's Aqualung album -  Family remained a band to be reckoned with.

Reckon with this - "Save Some For Thee," the best and best-produced song to grace Family's Fearless album, on which Wetton's lead vocal dominates.  Plenty of living for free here.   

Amtrak - Fifty Years

It was fifty years ago today that President Nixon signed the law nationalizing intercity passenger rail in the United States.  Rather than have a patchwork of private railroad companies - all privately owned, many of them going bankrupt as passenger rail was losing ground to automobiles and airlines - connect us, we would have one, unified system.

And the system contacted almost immediately to a small bunch of routes.

What President Nixon did was more than what he or his eight immediate successors would do for intercity passenger rail in the U.S. going forward.  Republican Presidents ignored Amtrak while Democrats mostly gave lip service to rebuilding and modernizing it.  President Biden is the first President since 1971 to go bold and make a big investment in Amtrak. (Obama, whom Biden served as Vice President, dropped his plans to invest in passenger rail when it became apparent that the lift was going to be heavier than he thought.)  Which makes sense, considering that Biden rode Amtrak back and forth between Washington, D.C. and his home in Delaware as a U.S. Senator.  Folks don't call him Amtrak Joe for nothing, though anti-transit, anti-Amtrak politicians likely call him that as a pejorative.

Despite all that, and despite the fact that Amtrak still has equipment and infrastructure dating back decades before Amtrak's founding, rail travel has been on the rebound in the past fifty years. Ridership has been going up steadily, routes have been improved and expanded, and the higher-speed Acela, pictured above (Spanish for "bullet train lite," but still a pretty sweet ride), was added on the Northeast Corridor in 2000.  But indifference from libertarians who prefer the "personal freedom" of the automobile, budget-conscious members of Congress, U.S. House members whose districts don't have Amtrak service, Americans who are sick and tried of being told to live like the Japanese or the French, and outright pricks like Jim Jordan have held Amtrak back from offering service that gets up to par with Japan's Shinkansen trains and France's TGV fleet.  Many of these same folks want to eliminate Amtrak altogether, and attempts have been made to lessen Amtrak subsidies to the point where it would have to shut down.  

But Amtrak has proven resilient, and for the first time since 1971, we have a big chance to invest the resources it needs to continue for another fifty years.  Even if some priorities, like a high-speed corridor between Chicago and Milwaukee, or increased service in California, have to be set aside for others - like increasing service in Florida or making the Acela a true bullet train - to get increased funding for Amtrak passed, I think it's obvious that Amtrak will stay around, and it will get much better than it is now because President Biden has the fortitude to make it happen even with a sharply divided Congress.  As I said on this blog back in 2003, no one wants Amtrak, except the people.

Love Is All Around

"The Mary Tyler Moore Show" debuted on CBS fifty years ago today, and I don't know if I can say anything about the series that hasn't already been said.  It was a groundbreaking sitcom that put a woman, Mary Richards, in the center of the storylines as the principal character.  She took charge of her life and was able to juggle work as an associate producer, later a full producer of a local TV-news show, and as part of an ensemble cast that included male and female characters of various strengths and idiosyncrasies , Mary Tyler Moore was able to redefine the situation comedy as we know it.  The acting, the writing, the production - I could go on.

In honor of this momentous anniversary, I present the very first episode of "The Mary Tyler Moore Show" - "Love Is All Around," which aired on CBS on Saturday, September 19, 1970 at 9:30 PM Eastern.  You're welcome :-)

Kent State - Fifty Years

The only good thing you could say about the two major Americans wars of this century, the Iraq War  and the Afghanistan War, was that while you may have been be called unpatriotic for being against them, at least you won't get massacred for it. That's exactly what happened to four students at Kent State University in Kent, Ohio, fifty years ago today - Monday, May 4, 1970.

A massive protest on the Kent State campus had begun three days earlier after President Nixon widened the war in Vietnam by bombing Cambodia in an attempt to go after Viet Cong guerillas taking refuge over the border. In an attempt to maintain order in Kent, Ohio governor James Rhodes - who detested the antiwar demonstrators - sent the state militia onto the campus on May 2. University officials attempted to ban the protest set for the following Monday, but two thousand demonstrators showed up anyway. The militia tried to control the crowd with tear gas, which led to a riot. In short order, shots were fired at the demonstrators, and four students were killed with twelve wounded.  I wrote on this blog a more detailed account a decade ago of what happened on that spring day in 1970, and I only bring it up again today because, first of all, a fifty-year anniversary is a major milestone, and secondly, we now have someone in the White House who has a problem with public dissent and would go farther than Nixon or Rhodes ever would have gone in order to stamp it out.

I was only four years old when the Kent State massacre took place, but it always infuriated me that anyone even would even attempt to curtail the right of free speech with weapons in the United States of America.  And in the aftermath of Kent State,  the exercise of the right to protest fell by the wayside for a long time when it became apparent that speaking out could get yourself killed. :-(

Once again, remember today the fourth of May.

Earth Day - Fifty Years

After fifty years of Earth Day and trying to take care of the planet for that long, we seem to have mixed results.  Rivers don't catch fire anymore and air is easier to breathe, but a lot of the progress we've made since 1970 has been undermined by our carbon footprint, which has resulted in riding sea levels, snowless winters, monster hurricanes, and Paris being hotter than Kinshasa in June.  Efforts to curb pollution have been stymied by business leaders and government leaders around the world who have great difficulty admitting that we have a problem - and for American leaders, that goes double. 

We have so much disrespect for our leaders that those of us who actually care about doing anything to save the planet try to do what we can ourselves, like walking a mile to the store instead of driving (many of us don't live close enough to stores to that, of course) and taking part in cleanup activities in early spring that, alas, have been canceled this year because of COVID-19, which could last into '22.  We so distrust the politicians that we forget that it was a politician who started Earth Day in the first place - Gaylord Nelson, a Democratic senator from Wisconsin.  (Underscoring our disdain for politicians is that the new U.S. Earth Day postage stamp issue this month neither pictures nor mentions Nelson, who died in 2005.  Back in the fifties, commemorative stamps for U.S. senators were quire common.) 

Ironically, the pandemic has done more for the environment than we humans could have ever done by keeping us from going out in our cars and powering our places of business, thus dramatically lowering our carbon footprint.  (It won't be enough to mitigate the 2020 Atlantic hurricane season, alas, which is till expected to be fierce.  And severe storms in America are already wreaking havoc on the South and the Northeast.)  To those of you who hoped that 2020 would be your year - myself included - sorry, this year belongs only to Mother Nature, and God's bratty kid sister is getting her sweet revenge. Earth Day now seems sadly quaint.

And in that spirit, here's a song from the year of the first Earth Day that still fits the times, fifty years later.

'A Song For Me' - Fifty Years

Fifty years ago today, the British band Family released their third album, A Song For Me.

This blog entry on A Song For Me is not meant to be a proper review of the LP, as I originally reviewed it on my Family page and I re-posted here back in January 2010.   Rather, it is a celebration of such a monumentally groundbreaking album that, after half a century, is one of the most direct and ferocious statements from rock music's classic age.  A Song For Me was recorded with two new members, flutist/keyboardist Poli Palmer and bassist/violinist John Weider, both having replaced two members (Jim King and Ric Grech, respectively), in the aftermath of a rough period for the band.  Their first American tour had been a disaster, and their first hit single, "No Mule's Fool," was a qualified success at best.  That an album of such magnitude could come out of Family at such a time shows how resilient they were.

My fellow Family scholar Patrick Little, a fan from Michigan whose own Family Web page has long since been discontinued, bought A Song For Me before getting any other Family album, and his recollection of how first responded to lead singer Roger Chapman's vocal sums up the spirit behind the LP and the group that recorded it.  Little wrote that when he heard Chapman's wailing voice for the first time on the opening cut, "Drowned In Wine," "I thought, 'What is he doing?'  The answer: rock and roll!"

A Song For Me is rock and roll, fiercely blazing a path through country, blues and folk and doing what all the best rock albums do - connecting the present to the past traditions that formed rock and roll in the first place.  As a piece of classic rock, contemplated in 2020, A Song For Me still holds up well, and it still offers the promise of what rock can be today and should be always.  Bear in mind that when A Song For Me was released in January 1970, rock was entering  the first of many rough patches to come.  The Beatles were in the middle of breaking up, the Rolling Stones were still reeling from Altamont, and egos threatened the prospects of Crosby, Stills, Nash and Young.  Also, middle-of-the-road pop was already taking over the pop charts in both Britain and America - in late January 1970, the number-one song in Britain was a cover of the music hall ditty "Two Little Boys" from Australian comedian Rolf Harris and the number-one song in America was B.J. Thomas's recording of "Raindrops Keep Fallin' On My Head."  A Song For Me stood out as a piece of music for its brutality, its beauty, and its power, an act of defiance not only on behalf of Family but on behalf of rock and roll itself.  With more verve than virtuosity, Weider, Palmer, and guitarist Charlie Whitney spearheaded the assault with drummer Rob Townsend backing it up, led by the bleated-goat vibrato of Roger Chapman.  No retreat, no surrender. 

The album's impact should have matched its power.  Though A Song For Me charted higher in Britain than any other Family LP in Britain, at number four, Americans couldn't be bothered with it - understandable, perhaps, since the U.S edition included the non-album single "No Mule's Fool" despite its lack of context with the rest of the LP, had a changed running order of some of the tracks, and somehow - incomprehensibly - excluded the heavy rockabilly tune "The Cat and the Rat."  But A Song For Me is still there in its original form to seek out and treasure, and it still provides a beacon of hope at a time when rock is undergoing its worst period since Elvis got drafted and Buddy Holly's plane went down.  Family's music remains a statement against naysayers ready to dismiss rock and roll as a form no longer worthy of consideration.  All you have to do is listen.

So listen to this - A Song For Me's epic, nine-minute title song, which is some of the most thunderous and thunderously brilliant rock and roll Family got on record.  Who turns deaf to what they say?

Half a Million Strong

Woodstock may not be an historic event on the level of the adoption of the Declaration of Independence, Wellington's victory at Waterloo, Lincoln's second inaugural address, or the Versailles peace conference, but when you have nearly 500,000 kids assembling in a field in Bethel, New York for three days of peace and music and having just that with no trouble at all, you have to admit that it's quite an achievement.

Everything that could have gone wrong with having a massive outdoor festival being overrun by more people who came with than without tickets and having too little food and too many drugs did, in fact, go wrong, but the audience was in a peaceful, relaxed mood in a peaceful, relaxed field on Max Yasgur's dairy farm, and they got to listen to great music from bands such as the Who, Sly and the Family Stone, Creedence Clearwater Revival, the Band, Crosby, Stills and Nash, and the Jefferson Airplane, as well as solo artists such as Richie Havens, Joan Baez, Joe Cocker, and Jimi Hendrix.  They were so well-behaved that they turned lemons in to lemonade by sharing food, accepting food from the locals, and sliding through mud caused by a severe rainstorm (this was, after all, summer in upstate New York) and enjoying the moment, and when the festival was over, they picked up their trash and left Mr. Yasgur's field they way they found it.  When things did go terribly wrong, there was someone around to set things right, like when a young woman cut her foot on broken glass and a New York state trooper - this was when young people feared authority - helped her get into his car so he could bring her to the hospital and fourteen concertgoers helped him drive out of the mud by pushing his car for him.

Cynics look at Woodstock and lament the liberal use of recreational drugs, the torrential rains, the inadequate sound, and the lack of amenities, and there were other shortcomings.  One was the lack of diversity in the audience despite the inclusion of black performers and also Carlos Santana's band, and a black music festival in Harlem that same month was more orderly and more family-friendly than Woodstock could ever be.  The hard truth is that this was where the divergence of white music and black music accelerated, though it wasn't necessarily racially motivated.  Most of the performers at Woodstock were unattached to traditional show-business standards, while many mainstream black artists were more conventional.  I can't imagine any of the popular Motown acts of the time, like the Supremes or the Temptations, bringing their exquisitely choreographed moves and their immaculately polished looks to an audience that had rejected that sort of thing, and it should be noted that some Motown acts were big draws on the nightclub circuit.  In fact, the last Supremes show featuring Diana Ross, which took place five months after Woodstock, was at the Frontier Hotel in Las Vegas.  I'm still perplexed as to why B.B. King, Howlin' Wolf, Odetta, or Muddy Waters - blues singers who were much more in sync with the Woodstock nation - weren't among the performers featured there.  (Though Otis Redding would certainly have been there if he were still alive.)

And if blacks didn't go to Woodstock in mass numbers, well, you can't help it if black people weren't so much into folk, straight rock and roll, or country-rock.  Conan O'Brien once joked that there are fewer blacks at concerts from English folk-rock bands like Mumford & Sons then there are in the U.S. Senate, so you have to make allowances.  But in 1969, when whites had as much trepidation about going to a soul revue - no matter how much they loved the music - as blacks had in going to Woodstock during a time of racial unease in the wake of Martin Luther King's death, integration was not going to magically happen.

The biggest criticism about Woodstock, though, was that the 500,000 kids who went thought that, by sheer will and through rock music, they could make a more peaceful world and a more just America magically happen.  Many of them would soon give up on that dream, particularly after Altamont and Kent State, but somehow the baby boomers managed to help end an unjust war by protesting against it, they popularized ecological awareness, and they were part of the movement that drove President Richard Nixon from office.  They didn't do all that by themselves, but they did move the world a couple of millimeters, and it's a shame that they didn't build on what successes they did have.  But then two oil crises and and runaway inflation, which we got in the seventies, can put a damper on a dream.  And it didn't help that rock music became a bigger business when record companies saw enough people to make a gold record out of one album in this massive field and realized they could turn rock into a commodity, which sowed the seeds of its still-in-progress decline.

Woodstock did allow its audience, though, to act more human and be more kind to each other, as David Crosby recently noted.  And that - the very idea that we can get along with perfect strangers through a shared bond - is probably Woodstock's greatest legacy ever.

I'll end with this quote from Max Yasgur (below) himself.

"I'm a farmer. I don't know how to speak to twenty people at one time, let alone a crowd like this. But I think you people have proven something to the world - not only to the Town of Bethel, or Sullivan County, or New York State; you've proven something to the world. This is the largest group of people ever assembled in one place. We have had no idea that there would be this size group, and because of that, you've had quite a few inconveniences as far as water, food, and so forth. Your producers have done a mammoth job to see that you're taken care of . . . they'd enjoy a vote of thanks. But above that, the important thing that you've proven to the world is that a half a million kids - and I call you kids because I have children that are older than you - a half million young people can get together and have three days of fun and music and have nothing but fun and music, and I God bless you for it!"

The Moon Landing - 50 Years On

As I wrote extensively about the first moon landing ten years ago for its fortieth anniversary, I didn't really feel a need to say more than I already said back in July 2009.  Now that I think of it, I do have a couple of stings to say.

We went to the moon because, in 1961, John F. Kennedy proposed that we do it before 1970 (we ended up going twice before then, as Apollo 12 occurred in November 1969) to catch up with the Soviets in the space race.  And because we Americans all had a common purpose and a willingness to do what everyone thought couldn't be done, or at least thought couldn't be done within a decade, and because we were always trying to better ourselves, we set out to do it.  No one had thought we could build buildings over a hundred stories tall, get millions of people out of poverty during the Depression, build a bridge over the Golden Gate, switch from making cars to making tanks overnight for the war effort after Pearl Harbor, or establish public medical insurance for the elderly.  But all of that happened.  Once upon a time, America was a place where big things happened.  Now, apparently, China is.  

Since 1969, we've let other countries, including what John Lennon would have called some of our beast friends, get ahead of us in everything.  It took us forever to catch up in some areas, while in most of them we haven't even bothered to do so.  For one thing, at the same time Americans went to the moon, the British and the French had this equally crazy idea of traveling long distances at the speed of sound, and so the Concorde jetliner was developed.  Meanwhile, we still don't have single-payer health insurance like Canada, we still haven't figured out how to save low-lying areas from flooding like the Netherlands, and we still don't have bullet trains like Japan or France.  And so many of us are so dismissive of climate change, we're going to have to rely on other countries to solve the problem instead.    

Part of the problem is our polarization, but another part of the problem is that most politicians don't call on us to to do bold things while those who do get ridiculed, like the backers of the Green New Deal, or ignored, as when then-presidential candidate Martin O'Malley said during a presidential candidates' forum that we could build a high-speed rail network and send a manned mission to Mars at the same time, only to get as a response a collective "meh." And there's a reason for that.  No one cares.  No one wants to do anything that will take too much time and money and likely benefit someone else.  We just want to stay home and watch TV.  The achievements we celebrate, like Apollo 11, are all past achievements; we're like rock fans who always go on about the thirtieth anniversary of this single of the fiftieth anniversary of that album because there's nothing current to brag about.   

There's obviously no appetite for doing big things in These States anymore.  America has lost a lot of things that made it special, but the greatest thing we've lost never to regain is our can-do spirit.  Next time someone says it can't be done, remember . . . it can't.  Because no one wants to do it.

Sorry to disappoint all those little girls who want to be the first woman on Mars . . . 

My reflections on Apollo 11 from July 2009 are here.

'Abbey Road' at 50

After last year's White Album commentary on this blog, you're probably wondering what I'm going to do this year for the fiftieth anniversary of the release of the last album the Beatles would ever record together, Abbey Road. I regret to report that there will not be a comparable series of commentary for various reasons, including constraints on my time, other endeavors I'm pursuing, and the fact that not every song on Abbey Road is worth going over in great detail. Remember, roughly half of the songs on Abbey Road are in the form of a long medley, because John Lennon and Paul McCartney left most of the medley songs in an unfinished state.

Of course, Abbey Road is still a monumental album, one that put rock on the pinnacle of artistic and cultural influence.  Sadly, rock and roll has gone downhill since, first slowly, then at a much more accelerated pace owing to the rise of hip-hop and the fall of practically everything else in popular music.   But I come to celebrate, not mourn, so I will be commenting on Abbey Road for its fiftieth anniversary sporadically over the next several weeks in the same casual manner that I wrote about the fiftieth anniversary of the release of Sgt. Pepper in 2017.  As I did with Sgt. Pepper's fiftieth anniversary, I plan to comment on a few of the songs on Abbey Road, the ones I consider to be the most important, and I also plan to write a little about the trivial and anecdotal aspects of the LP, including, obviously, a look at the cover.

This is not the cover, as you can gather.  It's one of many outtakes from the photo session for the record sleeve, this one showing the Beatles walking toward, not away from, the recording studio.  It - or an outtake like it - has been the source of a meme you might have seen on Facebook that reads, "WE MUST GO BACK - MUSIC NEEDS US."  

That's wishful thinking, alas, and so is the idea that a new Beatles will rise from the wasteland that is the popular music of today.  Rock's dominance of pop ended some time around the turn of the millennium, and the increased corporatization of the record (or "streaming," since not too many people bother with physical, tangible records anymore) business precludes another high-quality band that can play instruments and write songs from rising to the top when there's so much money to be made in pop mediocrity.  Hence, Ed Sheeran.  Abbey Road was the Beatles' parting gift to popular music, and as the twenty-teens stumble to a close, the dearth of fresh talent makes us appreciate it even more.

And Abbey Road almost didn't get recorded.  Between February and May 1969, a few of its songs were randomly recorded, with the Beatles and sometimes Chris Thomas, George Martin's assistant, taking the lead on guiding the recordings, although George Martin was technically the producer.  The first of these sessions was, in fact, helmed by Glyn Johns, and at Trident Studios, not Abbey Road Studios (then still called EMI Studios).  Nothing was expected to come of any of this . . . until Paul McCartney called George Martin and told him the Beatles wanted to make another album.  "Will you produce it, really produce it?"  Martin agreed, but only if the Beatles allowed him to be in control of the production the way he had been before the White Album.  "Yeah, we will," said Paul.  "Only please let's do the album."  Today, July 1, marks fifty years since the recording of Abbey Road began in earnest.  

More on this great album soon. 

"Hey Jude" - Fifty Years

(Although it's not on the Beatles' White Album, I have chosen to comment here on "Hey Jude," the single recorded during the sessions for that album.  It was such a huge hit, I can't ignore it.  The following is my commentary, slightly reworded, from when I featured the promotional clip for the song on my Music Video Of the Week page.) 

Fifty years ago this week - on August 26 in the U.S. and on August 30 in the U.K. - the Beatles released their most successful single ever.

"Hey Jude" started out as a song Paul McCartney conceived for John Lennon's song Julian.  He was riding out of London to see Julian and his mother Cynthia in Surrey and was trying to think of something to say to the boy after John left his family for Yoko Ono.  He started to think that he should say, "Hey Jules, don't feel bad, take a sad song and make it better . . ." Recognizing that he had the beginnings of a song, he began to write it, changing "Jules" to "Jude" because he thought it sounded better.  Paul's song evolved into both a message of comfort to Julian and a message of re-assurance to himself as he was on the rebound from his failed relationship with Jane Asher and pondering his desire to pursue Linda Eastman, whom he would marry in March 1969.

John Lennon mistakenly believed - very ironically, as it was his abandonment of his family that prompted the song - that "Hey Jude" was a message from Paul encouraging him to go off with Yoko. When Paul played it for John, John said, when he heard the line urging Jude to go out and get her, "Ah, it's me."  "No, said Paul," it's me."  "Check," John replied.  "We're both going through the same bit." In his Beatles book "Tell Me Why," Tim Riley summed up the message of "Hey Jude" quite nicely. "If the song is about self-worth and self-consolation in the face of hardship," he wrote, "the vocal performance itself conveys much of the journey. He begins by singing to comfort someone else, finds himself weighing his own feelings in the process, and finally, in the repeated refrains that nurture his own approbation, he comes to believe in himself."

Though Paul wrote "Hey Jude" by himself, John made it a Lennon-McCartney song not by adding or changing a lyric but by urging Paul to keep a lyric in.  Paul sang the "The movement you need is on your shoulder" and then told John that he'd change that lyric.  John then asked him why.  Paul was flabbergasted when the reasons were so obvious.  First, he needed a line to rhyme with "You're waiting for someone to perform with," and this line didn't rhyme at all.  Second, Paul had already used the word "shoulder" in a previous verse in the first bridge.  Third, it made no sense, and Paul told John all this, adding, "'The movement you need is on your shoulder'?  It sounds like I'm singing about a parrot!"  John was adamant that Paul leave the lyric in, having found his own meaning in it and adding that it was the best line in the song.  John must have thought that the line meant that Jude should look over his shoulder to see what his next move should be, and he was likely thinking of the moment in the Four Tops' "Reach Out I'll Be There" where Levi Stubbs called out, "Just look over your shoulder!"

When the Beatles arranged "Hey Jude," they oriented the song around Paul's piano, with an orchestral fade-out at the end that ended up being four minutes long - longer than the verse/bridge section, which was three minutes.  Thus "Hey Jude" was seven minutes long, unheard of (except for "MacArthur Park") for a pop song in 1968.  Producer George Martin feared that radio DJs in Britain and America wouldn't play "Hey Jude" because of its length.  "They will if it's us," John Lennon said.  And, as Martin later said, John was right.

The orchestra was comprised of forty musicians, thirty-nine of whom who did double duty and got double pay for singing and clapping hands to the chorus - "Na, na, na, na na na na, na na na na, hey Jude" - when the Beatles asked them to join in during recording sessions at Trident Studios in London.  One musician refused.  Paul himself yelled, screamed, and hollered in the style of his hero Little Richard in the fade-out, leading many to believe that he'd destroyed his vocal cords, but his voice survived.  Ironically, he later found during the Abbey Road sessions that he couldn't imitate Little Richard (for his vocal "Oh! Darling") as easily as he'd once done on songs like "I'm Down" and Little Richard's own "Long Tall Sally."

"Hey Jude" was the first Beatles single to be released on the group's Apple label, issued simultaneously with three other Apple singles - Mary Hopkin's "Those Were The Days" (a huge hit in its own right), Jackie Lomax's "Sour Milk Sea" (composed and produced by George Harrison) and the Black Dyke Mills Band's cover of "Yellow Submarine."  After the Magical Mystery Tour debacle and only a qualified success with "Lady Madonna," many had wondered if the Beatles still had it in them to make a great record, especially at a time when Americans were turning toward home-grown acts like the Doors, the Mamas and the Papas, the Jefferson Airplane, and Simon and Garfunkel.  (Attentive readers will note that three of these groups came from California, a state that would define much of American rock in the next few years.)  In fact, "Hey Jude" was successful beyond people's wildest imagination; it spent nine weeks at the top of the Billboard singles chart, becoming the Beatles' most successful single in America, its hopeful message no doubt a comfort to a nation in turmoil.  Beatles fans in America wrote to EMI's Capitol subsidiary in Los Angeles, distributing Apple releases in the States, urging that "Hey Jude" be re-issued as a stereo single.  (It wasn't, but all subsequent American Beatles singles were issued in stereo.)

The Beatles performed "Hey Jude" on David Frost's TV show in Britain (above) on September 4, 1968, joined by members of the audience on the chorus; the clip of the appearance was shown in America on the Smothers Brothers' CBS variety show.  For all of their great singles, "Hey Jude," arguably, remains the best single they ever made.

'Music In a Doll's House' - Fifty Years

The 1968 debut album from the British rock band Family, released fifty years ago this week (the exact anniversary date is July 19), Music In a Doll's House, isn't necessarily the best debut rock album of all time, but it is definitely in contention for the best debut rock album of 1968 - and the fact that it gets serious competition from Fairport Convention's self-titled debut and the Band's Music From Big Pink (the title is a reference to another tiny abode, the little pink house in upstate New York that the Band rehearsed in with Bob Dylan) means that even that distinction is not assured.  But in terms of innovation, imagination, and sheer chutzpah, Music In a Doll's House clearly has the edge.  Fairport Convention and the Band both aimed their music toward more traditional folk and pop form, while Family set out to create a new sound altogether.  And although it was recorded in the heady days of post-Sgt. Pepper psychedelia, Music In a Doll's House went beyond mere trendiness. Family incorporated all sorts of forms, from standard balladeering and blue-eyed soul to heavy rock and avant-garde experimentation, into their music.

While many rock acts, including the Beatles themselves, answered Sgt. Pepper with a return to basics, and various bands who were more adventurous were in a quandary in trying to push rock music farther, Family set a course that honored tradition while being open to new ideas.  Ironically, their mindset restricted them to a cult following; they had qualified commercial success in Britain and continental Europe and no such success whatsoever in North America.  Leaders Charlie Whitney and Roger Chapman refused to compromise their vision, and their unique approach restricted Family's appeal.  But they set a standard with Music In a Doll's House that remained resolute with each subsequent album they recorded, the music changing with each LP but still retaining a distinctive Family identity.  That identity was what made this LP and all six of their subsequent albums so essential to Family's fan base.           

Music In a Doll's House was, in some ways, a vision of what rock could be as the sixties were coming to an end.  Eventually rock stopped going forward, the roots-oriented sound of groups like the Band and Creedence Clearwater Revival homogenized into a standard country-rock sound, hard rock and heavy metal played themselves out, and progressive rock become innovative for the sake of innovation but rarely produced anything lasting.  Punk and grunge only bought rock a little more time as other pop forms gained on and overtook it.  But in 1968, Family found a way forward that kept them grounded in rock and R&B but allowed them to innovate, and they carried that ideal through their recording career (and many personnel changes) to the point where they felt they could go no farther, wisely calling it quits in 1973 as their well began to run dry.  Music In a Doll's House is an important debut album because it showed how the promise of musical progression could be achieved . . . and was.  That message resonates fifty years on.

This blog entry is not so much a proper review of Music In a Doll's House as it is a celebration of it as I mark its golden anniversary.  For a more detailed review, please consult my Family review page. :-)     

'Yellow Submarine' - Fifty Years

Fifty years ago today, July 17, 1968, the animated Beatles movie Yellow Submarine premiered in London.

Yellow Submarine is regarded as one of the greatest animated movies of all time, using all sorts of innovative sequences and caricatures with a vivid array of colors.  It's a cinematic expression of the psychedelic art of the late sixties that many aging hippies believe is a perfect approximation of an acid trip, yet it was sweet and palatable enough for children.  The storyline takes the cartoon Beatles on a trip through the deep seas to Pepperland, an unearthly paradise of music, love, and happiness, to save it from the Blue Meanies, who have taken it over and eliminated love, music, and everything positive.  The story uses music from no fewer than sixteen Beatles songs (including four songs recorded for the movie), yet the plot holds together quite nicely, with all sorts of visual surprises and delights throughout.

Amazingly, Yellow Submarine was made almost by accident.  The movie was an extension of the old animated Beatles cartoon series that ran in the U.S., which involved American producer Al Brodax and Canadian animator George Dunning.  When the Beatles couldn't agree on a script for the third movie they owed United Artists (after A Hard Day's Night and Help!), they reluctantly agreed to a cartoon movie (which Brodax would produce and Dunning would direct), but having seen the TV cartoons and found them embarrassing - which is why they weren't shown in Britain - they didn't want to be deeply involved with the film.  They would only film a brief appearance for the end.  

Then they saw the final cut with German poster artist Heinz Edelmann's incredible art work and with some snappy, cheeky dialogue overseen by Liverpool poet Roger McGough, and they instantly realized that this movie was not going to be just another cartoon feature. In fact, it would draw comparisons to Walt Disney's 1940 movie Fantasia for its artistry.

But here's the funny thing; Yellow Submarine was originally a flop.

The movie received a wide opening in British theaters on the heels of its world premiere in London, but it was pulled after only a few weeks and mixed, somewhat ho-hum reviews.  It was replaced by one British movie-theater chain with a re-release of Disney's Peter Pan, because, according to a chain representative, "at least the children could understand that!"  Yellow Submarine's American release had been put off until November 1968, and United Artists executives might have been worried about what the stateside response would be like; after all, Magical Mystery Tour, the Beatles' previous film endeavor, was so poorly received in Britain that, after its TV airing there, no American television network would even touch it.

If they did worry, they needn't have; when Yellow Submarine premiered in the United States on November 13, 1968, it received nearly unanimous raves from movie critics and was a box-office smash.  It was such a huge hit, it was playing in American theaters as late as September 1969.  Why was it a big success in the United States?  Think about it.  By Thanksgiving 1968, Americans had gone through watching some of the worst fighting in the Vietnam War on TV news, seen Martin Luther King Jr. assassinated followed by urban rioting as least as fierce as the Newark and Detroit riots of 1967, seen Robert Kennedy assassinated, witnessed antiwar demonstrations turn to rioting at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, and awokened the day after the presidential election to discover that Richard Nixon would be their new President.  Yellow Submarine provided a hopeful tale of how love, music and harmony would prevail against Blue Meanies like Richard Nixon and George Wallace.  It was a fantasy, but a beautiful fantasy Americans could relate to (and, in the Age of Trump, still can).

Yellow Submarine is currently being screened in theaters in different towns in America for its fiftieth anniversary release. Yes, I just saw it - first time I've seen it on the big screen.  And I watch it every Thanksgiving on home video - I've done so since 2000.  And because there's so much to say about Yellow Submarine - too much to say in one blog post - expect me to return to the subject of this movie between now and the fiftieth anniversary of its American premiere this November.

Long Time Gone

How is it that fifty years after Robert Kennedy's assassination, the divisions in the country that he hoped to heal as President and the unjust foreign policy he hoped to end still haven't been addressed?   How is it that the United States has only become a meaner, nastier place?  How is it that we Americans have become more violent, more complacent and indifferent, and more cynical?

Don't expect me to say that there's any hope to build a better America after half a century, and not just because Republicans, in response to President Barack Obama's call of "Oh yes, we can," yelled back, "Oh no, you don't!"  And not just because of that clown now in the White House or the Republican ringmasters who sustain him and egg him on to make America the country the world loves to hate.  I blame the Democrats too.  Obama couldn't count on support at low moments of his Presidency from top Democrats, whose game of politics as usual disappointed and disgusted Obama's enthusiastic and idealistic supporters - but, truth be told, Obama himself never articulated what he meant by "hope and change."  And when Democrats vying to succeed Obama sought to pick up Bobby Kennedy's mantle and bring people - black and white, working class and professional class, native-born and immigrants, Christians and Muslims - together, they were undermined by a Democratic establishment who went  and got Hillary Clinton the nomination based on identity politics (the female candidate, the candidate for blacks, et. al.).  Bernie Sanders was dismissed as "the white candidate" despite his efforts to appeal to the 99 percent of Americans, and Martin O'Malley, despite his own outreach to different groups, had his experience in government held against him to discourage blacks and young people from giving him a hearing.

And if Bobby Kennedy had campaigned for President in 2016?  His interest in the poor would have been laughed at by corporate centrists and his reputation as a "law and order" man would have had identity liberals holding him in contempt.

These same Democrats - the people who helped Trump win the presidential election by brushing aside everything RFK stood for - want me to support another corporate establishment presidential candidate in 2020 so I can stand with them against Trump in brotherhood.  May I say one thing to corporate Democrats? Don't give me that brother-brother-brother, brother! >:-( 

Below is a clip of the end of Robert Kennedy's last speech - his victory speech in the June 4, 1968 California presidential primary - moments before he was shot.

  

It's still a long, long, long, long time before the dawn.

One More In the Name of Love

It really amazes me that fifty years after the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr., Americans are coming more apart than together and are drawn even more to people who divide us and set us against each other for selfish reasons and destructive agendas.  American civilization has not only become more divisive, it has become coarser, more violent and less free.  Poor people of all races and colors are constantly diminished and shamed, we have a President who seeks to maximize his power to the point of being authoritarian, and for every Trump voter who wants to return to an America that never was, there's a smug leftie who wants to celebrate differences without adhering to common standards - like civic duty and a shared purpose.  And when we're not denigrating each other's dignity, we're bombing people in other countries that stand in the way of American hegemony, just as we did in Vietnam . . . and Grenada . . . and Iraq . . ..

I really can't say anything that hasn't already been said about how far we have not come since the assassination of Dr. King, who was the apostle of non-violence, brotherhood, equality, and the rule of law, but Dr. King's last speech ever, delivered in Memphis fifty years ago today, pretty much sums up how daunting the long, hard climb to a better world was then . . . and is now.

This video is a edit of two excerpts from that speech, referring to plans to fight an injunction against striking sanitation workers in Memphis, whom Dr. King was there to help, to deny them there right to protest.  I tear up every time I hear this . . ..  

Dylan's Three Kings

Fifty years ago today, Bob Dylan released his long-awaited followup to his Blonde on Blonde double album . . . the spectacularly great low-key album John Wesley Harding, which I already reviewed on my blog.  In celebration of this milestone, I present the liner notes of John Wesley Harding - written by Dylan - which are as essential as the record itself.

*

There were three kings and a jolly three too. The first one had a broken nose, the second, a broken arm and the third was broke. "Faith is the key!" said the first king. "No, froth is the key!" said the second. "You're both wrong," said the third, "the key is Frank!"

It was late in the evening and Frank was sweeping up, preparing the meat and dishing himself out when there came a knock upon the door. "Who is it?" he mused. "It's us, Frank," said the three kings in unison, "and we'd like to have a word with you!" Frank opened the door and the three kings crawled in.

Terry Shute was in the midst of prying open a hairdresser when Frank's wife came in and caught him. "They're here!" she gasped. Terry dropped his drawer and rubbed the eye. "What do they appear to be like?" "One's got a broken vessel and that's the truth, the other two I'm not so sure about." "Fine, thank you, that'll be all." "Good" she turned and puffed. Terry tightened his belt and in an afterthought, stated: "Wait!" "Yes?" "How many of them would you say there were?" Vera smiled, she tapped her toe three times. Terry watched her foot closely. "Three?" he asked, hesitating. Vera nodded.

"Get up off my floor!" shouted Frank. The second king, who was first to rise, mumbled, "Where's the better half, Frank?" Frank, who was in no mood for jokes, took it lightly, replied, "She's in the back of the house, flaming it up with an arrogant man, now come on, out with it, what's on our minds today?" Nobody answered.

Terry Shute then entered the room with a bang, looking the three kings over and fondling his mop. Getting down to the source of things, he proudly boasted: "There is a creeping consumption in the land. It begins with these three fellas and it travels outward. Never in my life have I seen such a motley crew. They ask nothing and they receive nothing. Forgiveness is not in them. The wilderness is rotten all over their foreheads. They scorn the widow and abuse the child but I am afraid that they shall not prevail over the young man's destiny, not even them!" Frank turned with a blast, "Get out of here, you ragged man! Come ye no more!" Terry left the room willingly.

"What seems to be the problem?" Frank turned back to the three kings who were astonished. The first king cleared his throat. His shoes were too big and his crown was wet and lopsided but nevertheless, he began to speak in the most meaningful way, "Frank," he began, "Mr. Dylan has come out with a new record. This record of course features none but his own songs and we understand that you're the key." "That's right," said Frank, "I am." "Well then," said the king in a bit of excitement, "could you please open it up for us?" Frank, who all this time had been reclining with his eyes closed, suddenly opened them both up as wide as a tiger. "And just how far would you like to go in?" he asked and the three kings all looked at each other. "Not too far but just far enough so's we can say that we've been there," said the first chief. "All right," said Frank, "I'll see what I can do," and he commenced to doing it. First of all, he sat down and crossed his legs, then he sprung up, ripped off his shirt and began waving it in the air. A lightbulb fell from one of his pockets and he stamped it out with his foot. Then he took a deep breath, moaned and punched his fist through the plate-glass window. Settling back in his chair, he pulled out a knife, "Far enough?" he asked. "Yeah, sure, Frank," said the second king. The third king just shook his head and said he didn't know. The first king remained silent. The door opened and Vera stepped in. "Terry Shute will be leaving us soon and he desires to know if you kings got any gifts you wanna lay on him." Nobody answered.

It was just before the break of day and the three kings were tumbling along the road. The first one's nose had been mysteriously fixed, the second one's arm had healed and the third one was rich. All three of them were blowing horns. "I've never been so happy in all my life!" sang the one with all the money.

"Oh mighty thing!" said Vera to Frank, "Why didn't you just tell them you were a moderate man and leave it at that instead of goosing yourself all over the room?" "Patience, Vera," said Frank. Terry Shute, who was sitting over by the curtain cleaning an ax, climbed to his feet, walked over to Vera's husband and placed his hand on his shoulder. "Yuh didn't hurt yer hand, didja Frank?" Frank just sat there watching the workmen replace the window. "I don't believe so," he said.

'Magical Mystery Tour' - Fifty Years

Fifty years ago today, the British Broadcasting Corporation's television channel BBC1 debuted the Beatles' first and only television movie Magical Mystery Tour.  It was their first - and again, only - unqualified failure.

Magical Mystery Tour was an experimental musical film that the Beatles wrote, produced and directed themselves, despite knowing next to nothing about making movies before this.  It was in part a desire to express themselves on screen without the help of intermediaries like Richard Lester and Walter Shenson, the respective director and producer of their first two theatrically released movies.  But it was also an earnest effort to explore artistic media other than records.

It was Paul McCartney who first conceived the idea of the Beatles making a film for TV.  Paul had been experimenting with film and had been making avant-garde shorts in his spare time, and he thought that it would be pretty cool for the Beatles to do something similar for the tube.  Though John Lennon had his doubts, he was by no means averse to experimental cinema.  He and friend and Beatles collaborator Victor Spinetti, who'd starred with the Beatles in A Hard Day's Night and Help!, sat through two successive screenings of the Luis Buñuel 1967 movie Belle De Jour checking out Buñuel's camera angles and use of color (and no doubt also checking out the film's star, Catherine Deneuve, but that's another issue).  Besides, as John later remembered, the Beatles had given up touring and even one-night-only concerts, and "if stage shows were to be out, we wanted something to replace them. Television was the obvious answer." George Harrison and Ringo Starr were also game.  So the plan preceded. 

The premise of the film was based on the mystery tour, a popular diversion for the English working class at the time.  The idea was simple; you got on a bus, you had no idea where you were going or what route you were taking, and you only found out were you were going once you got there.  In the north of England, that usually meant taking a coach trip to the seaside resort of Blackpool, where tour goers would watch the city's annual light display and get drunk.  But it was the antics of a group of American hippies that the Beatles hoped would provide the inspiration for the magic - Ken Kesey and his Merry Pranksters, who rode in a psychedelic-painted school bus drinking Kool-Aid spiked with LSD and recording their visions on the trip, a practice later documented by Tom Wolfe in his book "The Electric Kool-Aid Acid Test."  Paul McCartney hoped that the Beatles, all of whom were tripping on a regular basis in 1967, could capture on film the same sort of visions they captured in music.  The film was to be aired during, believe it or not, Christmas time; the Beatles thought that Magical Mystery Tour could be a hip holiday special in contrast to the straight holiday fare that performers like Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby had made for American television. It would be aired by the BBC on the day after Christmas, celebrated by the Brits as Boxing Day.

The first Beatles project released after the death of Beatles manager Brian Epstein, Magical Mystery Tour was planned as soon as work on Sgt. Pepper was wrapping up.  Paul wrote the title song in early 1967 and the Beatles recorded it that April.  Work began on the soundtrack record in earnest in August 1967, just before Epstein's death; by a strange coincidence, Epstein attended a recording session for the soundtrack on Wednesday, August 23, that turned out to be the last Beatles recording session before his death on Sunday, August 27.  Though Epstein would be in a cheerful mood a couple of days after the session in anticipation of his planned visit to America for the following month, he wasn't in good spirits that Wednesday night.  It's as if he could see what was going to happen. 

There was no real script.  The Beatles simply rented a bus, invited friends, actors, circus performers and a little girl named Nicola (now known as Nikki Hale and living in a Chicago suburb - really!), and they all rode around Devon and Cornwall for two weeks in September 1967 filming as they went.  Additional filming took place into October, and recording sessions for the songs in the film continued concurrently.  The ideas for the film ranged from John shoveling spaghetti on a plate in a restaurant (based on a dream he had) and Ringo driving the bus in a track race to all of the passengers entering a pup tent at once and the male passengers stopping at a club to watch a woman strip while the Bonzo Dog Doo Dah Band perform a teen-tragedy parody song about a young woman who dies in a taxi crash, called "Death Cab For Cutie."  (Yes, this is where that indie-rock band got its name.)  Victor Spinetti got into the act by playing a drill sergeant trying to get the tour party to join the army.  As you can gather, there was no plot and little suspense, unlike in A Hard Day's Night and Help!; the group was improvising a basic trajectory from a beginning to an end.  The songs in Magical Mystery Tour, meanwhile, are interspersed throughout as surreal vignettes ("I Am the Walrus" in a weird musical land of anthropomorphic creatures and city policemen all in a row, for example), with five magicians in the sky (played by the Beatles and Beatles assistant Mal Evans) directing the tour.  It all ends with a Busby Berkeley-style sequence with the Beatles in white suits (below) performing "Your Mother Should Know."

"We filled it in as we went along," John Lennon later said. "We knew most of the scenes we wanted to include, but we bent our ideas to fit the people concerned, once we got to know our cast.  If somebody wanted to do something we hadn’t planned, they went ahead. If it worked, we kept it in."

Magical Mystery Tour aired for the first time on BBC1 on Boxing Day, Tuesday, December 26, 1967, drawing fifteen million Britons - 27 percent of the British population at the time - to watch.  The Beatles were hugely successful at getting people to tune in, but after 52 minutes of their self-indulgence and aimless camera and storyline experiments that seemed neither magical nor mysterious, the Brits turned off and dropped out.  The following day, the Daily Express's television critic got front-page space for his review - "I cannot ever remember seeing such blatant rubbish."  (To understand how devastating that is, just say "blatant rubbish" in a pompous British accent.)  Other reviewers, none of whom obviously got to screen it in advance, called it "appalling," "chaotic," and "a colossal conceit."  The band Traffic - which actually filmed a sequence for the movie - could breathe a collective sigh of relief knowing that they'd been edited out of it.     

To be fair, the film was aired on the wrong channel. Magical Mystery Tour's raison d'etre was the Beatles' use of color, in all of its forms; the sequence for their instrumental "Flying," the first of only a few original compositions credited to all four Beatles, was presented with colorized images of clouds from a black-and-white Stanley Kubrick film.  Ironically, TV viewers could only see them in black-and-white - BBC1 didn't broadcast in color at the time.  Magical Mystery Tour was aired on the color channel BBC2 on January 5, 1968, but between the day after Christmas and the eve of the Feast of the Epiphany, the Brits had already abandoned the idea of giving Magical Mystery Tour a second chance. 

An American TV deal was cancelled on the basis of the reaction to the British airing, so Magical Mystery Tour became the musical equivalent of Cuban cigars in the United States - forbidden fruit, something so rare and unattainable that you had to seek it out for yourself.  Unlike Cuban cigars, which have a stellar reputation, Magical Mystery Tour had such a bad reputation that Americans seeking it out went in to it with low expectations, anticipating that it would be bad but also asking how bad it could possibly be.  It became a cult item, first being shown twice at the Fillmore East in New York in 1968, later being given limited theatrical release in the seventies and then occasionally popping up at 1:30 in the morning on local TV.  Many American Beatles fans come away from Magical Mystery Tour with a different appraisal than their British counterparts - yes, it's bad, but it's not horrible enough to warrant all the criticism it got from British audiences back in 1967. Americans see it in ironic terms - it's so bad, it's good.  Some Americans have even come away from it with a sense of sincere appreciation; Steven Spielberg has praised the camera angles and use of color in the movie, and he cites it as an influence.    Magical Mystery Tour's very elusiveness in These States has allowed the film to hold up better in the U.S. than it did in the U.K., where its failure with the press and the public led Paul McCartney to admit that "we goofed really."

As it turned out, those foolish Beatles on the hill proved to be wiser than those who scorned them.  Magical Mystery Tour actually broke new ground for rock and roll, as other rockers took this sad song of an idea and, well, made it better.  The following year, 1968, the Monkees made the trippy theatrical movie Head; ironically, fans and critics consider this Magical Mystery Tour copy from the prefabricated Beatles copycats to be the superior movie.  Also in 1968, the one man who inspired the Beatles more than any other, Elvis Presley, made the definitive rock and roll Christmas special, aired on NBC that December 3.  So even in failure, the Beatles succeeded.

Goo goo g'joob!

Magical Mystery Tour was finally aired on American national television on December 14, 2012, on PBS, the closest thing the United States has to the BBC, with a documentary on the making of the film preceding it.

Full circle.